1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to managing expiration dated products and more particularly to refrigerator contents management.
2. Description of the Related Art
A refrigerator, commonly referred to as a “fridge” is a kitchen appliance tasked with cooling its contents. Generally, a refrigerator includes a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump designed to transfer heat from the thermally insulated compartment to the external environment thereby cooling the contents of the compartment to a temperature below ambient. As it is well known, cooling is a popular food storage technique in developed countries and operates to extend the shelf-life of food by decreasing the reproduction rate of bacteria in the food. The refrigerator thus is used to reduce the rate of spoilage of foodstuffs.
The shelf-life of foodstuffs pertains to the date at which it is expected the foodstuffs to become spoiled despite the operation of the refrigerator. To alert the consumer of the expiration date of a particular product, often the packaging or labeling of the product includes a printed indication of the expiration date of the product. However, as the capacity of a refrigerator can be substantial, in many cases the consumer simply forgets to check the expiration dates of different stored foodstuffs in the refrigerator and frequently can be placed in the position of having to discard unconsumed foodstuffs that have exceeded their respective shelf-lives.
Smart home technologies act to avoid the unnecessary waste of foodstuffs. In this regard, basic smart refrigerators can be programmed by the consumer to alert the consumer when a particular product has exceeded its shelf-life. More advanced smart refrigerators can provide for the optical scanning or wireless sensing of the product expiration date directly from information included with the product packaging. Even more advanced smart refrigerators cooperate with smart containers to achieve the automated tracking of food product expiration dates. Of note, smart refrigerators can include embedded computing systems, or smart refrigerators can be conventional refrigerators with coupled computing systems. In the latter instance, a conventional refrigerator can be retrofitted with a computing system to render the conventional refrigerator a smart refrigerator.
Smart food containers are equipped with communicative sensors that can interact with a reader attached to the refrigerator, and connected to a touchscreen. Whenever a container is used and stored in the fridge, the container can be scanned, recognized, and the user can be prompted to enter food information the contents of the container into an associated computer system. Based on food information and refrigerator settings, the software can calculate how long the food will remain edible and keep stock. Of note, smart refrigerators further can be permit remote access to internal data, for example from a mobile device so that when a consumer shops at the grocery store, the consumer can determine in real time food items to purchase based on low stock reports from the smart refrigerator.